Outside of the Apple ecosystem, affordability reigns supreme. According to the latest data from AdDuplex, the budget-priced Lumia 520 has now taken more than 30% of the Windows Phone market share, and when combined with the Lumia 521, the two phones make up more than one-third of all Windows Phone sales worldwide. And if you narrow the results to just Windows Phone 8 devices, then the Lumia 520 and 521 account for more than 40% of all devices sold. The Lumia 520 has been the undisputed leader of the Windows Phone market for quite some time, and to further cement itself in that position, the phone has captured an additional 4% of the market over the past month. More →

The Lumia 520 is Nokia’s most important smartphone in 2013 — it’s the budget Windows Phone that is supposed to recapture low-end smartphone share in emerging markets. A bit of digging has revealed that India-based retailer ​Flipkart just hiked prices on the Lumia 520, which has been in and out of stock since launching in early April. The 520’s price had been 9,999 rupees since it first debuted, but has since moved to 10,299 rupees in late May. It is extremely rare for smartphone prices to bounce up two months after launching. Nokia’s Lumia 520 keeps selling out at Flipkart, India’s leading e-tailer site, even though its production should have ramped up strongly by now. Is this a sign of remarkably strong demand for the low-end Lumia, or a symptom of Nokia’s production bottlenecks? More →

The extensive new China Brand Power Index is fascinating reading on many levels. Who knew that McDonald’s Coffee is the third most popular cafe chain in China? Or that Buick is the second most popular compact car brand? Yet perhaps the biggest shock can be found in the mobile phone category, where Nokia (NOK) still beats Apple (AAPL) in brand power and trails only Samsung (005930) for the title of China’s No. 1 mobile brand. As a matter of fact, Samsung leads Nokia only slightly on points (542 vs. 530), whereas Apple is far behind with 411 points. More →

Nokia (NOK) decided to eschew the high-end smartphone market at Mobile World Congress this week to focus on a line of lower-cost phones aimed at defending its turf in emerging markets from the likes of Samsung (005930) and its REX feature phone series. The Finnish phone manufacturer on Monday announced four new phones: The Nokia Lumia 720 and 520 smartphones and the Nokia 301 and 105 feature phones. The Lumia 720 is the most high-end of all the devices with a 4.3-inch touch display with a resolution of 800 x 480 pixels, a dual-core 1GHz Snapdragon processor and a 6.7-megapixel camera. The device is priced at $329 before carrier subsidies and will begin launching in Asia during the first quarter of 2013 before expanding to Europe in the second quarter. More →